P.U.P.O.

Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise...


A year ago today I became a mom, my best accomplishment yet.

Pieces of Them....

When my wife and I first started our journey through ttc, we had planned on me carrying her embie for the first pregnancy (we never thought we'd have twins) and then I'd carry my own for a second pregnancy. We did it this way because #1 She is older, so we wanted to make sure we'd get them while they were good, #2 She had a fear of being pregnant (mostly of childbirth). We only ever talked 2 kids, again, we never planned on having twins.

Well, our first pregnancy we got twins and I got sick, so sick that I don't ever desire to be pregnant again. Also, I don't have any strong feelings for or against having bio children, so if the twins happen to be the only babies we have, I am completely Ok with that. I love them to pieces and they have never felt like anything other than OURS.

That being said, my wife has had a change of heart with regards to pregnancy. Strange, I know, considering she witnessed first hand everything that could go wrong in a pregnancy. I think it was the fact that despite everything that did go wrong, there was one very good right, and that was feeling our babies move inside me and carrying them with me everywhere I went. Unless you have been pregnant before, there really is no other feeling like it. Through all of my misery, those baby kicks kept me going, and once I delivered them, I immediately "missed" them and missed being pregnant (strangely). Anyhow, I think it is something that she has decided she wants to experience, and I am all for it if that is what she wants. Besides, I know she will have an easy pregnancy and delivery. :)

Since we have the coverage, we will be doing IVF again when the time comes, and hopefully the conception part will go as quickly as with the twins. This time, she will carry my embie, and this time we will only implant ONE.

For our first IVF, the RE was very conservative with the meds since we were both young and had no history of infertility. They retrieved 11 eggs, of which 10 fertilized and we used 2. Of the 8 left, 6 froze and are still 'chillin' out at the RE's office. We weren't really sure how many tries it would take for us to get pregnant, and even once I was pregnant, we wanted to make sure I would make it to delivery before figuring out what to do with the frozen goods. Of course we were pregnant on that very first try, and now that the boys have been born, we have been discussing what she would like to do with her frozen "babies". We've been paying the storage fee for almost a year now, and we have no intention of using them, so its about time we decide what to do with them.

Here is where it shows that she is a much better person than I am. She wants to donate them to a needy couple. If it were me, I just couldn't do it, and this is something I have been thinking about for when we do my retrieval. I think I am too much of a control freak to put "my babies" in someone elses hands. Selfish, I know. She keeps reminding me that if it were not for some wonderful guy out there, we would not have our baby boys, and I agree wholeheartedly. I just think its a little different. Since her eggs are already fertilized, these "babies" will be 100% related to our boys. Usually when you are just an egg donor, then whoever gets them fertilizes them with their own sperm and the relation is just 50% (I have no idea why that matters-but it does). I just keep thinking that if they were to get pregnant using these frozen "babies" someone out there could have a little guy or a big guy just.like.ours.

However, I would also hate for these "babies" to go to waste. I don't want to just have them "destroyed" which is the other option. So, what do we do? Keep them frozen forever? Donate them to research? Be like the famous Oc.to.mom. and use them all? lol that will never happen!

I think a part of me is just not ready to let them go. I am even thinking about skipping the part where we use my embies and just use hers again and do a FET. But again, I would only want to implant one and I think they are frozen in pairs. I don't know what we would do if we got twins again, but I realize that a FET probably has a lower implantation rate. Still, not a chance we are willing to take. We love our twins, but given the choice we would like to see what its like to have just ONE newborn, and I think pregnancy would be alot easier with just a singleton.

Geez, am I really talking about our "next" baby? Crazy, I know, given the last few days we just had!

Our Pregnancy

Our pregnancy was quite eventful, I think because we so easily conceived we made up for it with a very difficult pregnancy. After our first ultrasound, I was pretty nervous about having and raising twins. I was 5 weeks then and it took about a week for me to finally be excited about my twin pregnancy. Always the positive thinker, my wife had joked about us having twins prior to our BFP and was so excited when she found out they both implanted.

Over the next few weeks we did several ultrasounds (1 weekly with our RE) and I grew more and more excited for our babies. By week 9 my RE "released" me from his care and said I should make an appointment with my OB to continue my pre-natal care. I made an appointment for two weeks later but before I could be seen by my regular OB I had to be seen by another doctor (let's call him Dr. Gray) in order to first confirm my pregnancy. Dr. Gray came in and did an ultrasound, saw baby A (who was always front and center) and then quickly looked in baby B's direction and pulled out the u/s scope. He proceeded to tell me (with the biggest smile you can imagine) that "this other one isn't viable so you will be having a singleton pregnancy, congratulations!" I was stunned, not just by the news that I had lost one of our babies but more so by the cheery way in which he delivered that news. I couldn't believe it since I had just seen the babies and heard their heartbeats two days before! I asked him to look again since my RE always had to pull uncomfortably on the scope so we could see baby B because he was in a more difficult spot to see. He said he was sure and when I asked "so when is it confirmed" he said "Oh I'm pretty much confirming it now, but if it makes you feel better I can refer you to our u/s tech for the day after tomorrow, it was nice to meet you!" And then out the door he went.

I was in shock and I immediately called my wife in tears telling her what had just happened. She was pretty upset and confused as well, so we decided to go back to our RE and see what he had to say. Luckily he got us in for an u/s the very next morning and to our surprise "still two babies, two heartbeats!" he happily stated... At this point I didn't know what to think! I had already spent the entire night preparing for bad news and now I was thrown for a loop again. I wanted to just kill Dr. Gray but decided I would keep the appointment with their u/s tech (which was the next day) and make sure all was still ok.

Still not confident about how this would turn out I walked in to meet Joanie (the u/s tech) and explained to her what had happened. She was super nice and said if there are babies she will find them, and she did - BOTH of them!

At this point I had just reached 11 weeks. Hoping the worst part was over, I looked forward to getting rid of the all day "morning" sickness, but every day it only seemed to get worse. I could barely eat or drink anything without running to the bathroom to be sick right after. I'd pace the halls in our house nightly for at least an hour before I could get myself to lie down. I threw up several times at work and started losing weight really fast. By week 12 I had lost about 20 pounds and remember lying in bed barely wanting to move. I had heard morning sickness was horrible so I figured I would just have to hang in there and it would ease. When I finally called my OB to get some relief she had me come in for a check-up. I was there long enough for her to get a urine sample before she sent me over to be admitted into L&D for severe dehydration and a diagnoses of hyperemesis. For 3 days I had 3 separate IV lines all running at the same time to refill my fluids. I was also on a medication to ease my condition which made me want to rip off my skin and run out of there! It was a nightmare! I had to be taken to the cardiology unit to monitor my heart because the medication they gave me tends to slow down your heart rate -which could be dangerous for me and the babies.

When I was finally released they sent me home with pills to take (which was very difficult since I wasn't able to hold anything down) and I took them for a while but then decided I was well enough to just suffer it out. Luckily I was able to take time off work, because my nausea didn't ease up until I was about 6 months pregnant and it never completely went away. When I finally did go back to work I was 24 weeks pregnant and barely gaining weight. I had probably only gained 12 pounds. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes shortly after but didn't require any insulin. I met with a nutritionist who was supposed to help me gain weight without causing my diabetes to worsen. We did exactly what she said (even measuring our portions) and in a week she made me lose 3 pounds (which is very bad during pregnancy-especially twins) which is when I decided I was on my own and I wouldn't be following her advice.

I was barely at work for a month when I went in for my OB check-up and they found my blood pressure was very high. I was immediately sent to L&D and told that I had developed pre-eclampsia. I was told I would deliver that night if my blood pressure didn't go down. I was 29 weeks 6 days pregnant and so NOT ready to have my babies.

I made it a week before I was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome and was forced to deliver at 31 weeks. My liver was failing and my platelets were dropping and the risk to my life outweighed the benefit of keeping the babies in any longer. I was really scared for the babies and didn't really know what to expect. I just hoped they'd survive and wouldn't have any major health issues but after speaking to the director of the NICU and doing some research I knew we'd have a long road ahead. So, after 12 horrible days in L&D (due to really awful nursing staff on top of the stress of a pending preterm delivery), on April 10th 2009, I delivered our two beautiful baby boys via c-section. Weighing a little over 3 pounds each they were super tiny and were immediately taken to the NICU.

Who we are...

We are two moms raising our 3 month old twin boys in Southern California. We have been together 4 years and are one of 18,000 couples whose marriage is still valid and recognized by the state.

Last year we decided we wanted to expand our family (which also included our 3 mini dachshunds) and have our first baby. We skipped right to IVF because we wanted to have my wifes egg implanted into my uterus so I would carry her embryo for the first pregnancy and then I'd carry my own for the second pregnancy (we did it this way since she is a few years older than me and didn't want to experience pregnancy). I switched my insurance at work to the more expensive plan and added my wife to it since it covered IVF and other fertility treatments at 90%. I started doing some research and spoke to some friends of ours who were also going through IVF. They referred us to an RE who we met with in February of 2008. They gave us a bunch of guidelines to start preparing my body for pregnancy and we arranged to start the process in mid July of 2008. We wanted the baby to be born by the end of June 2009 since my wife is a teacher and we could have the summer together (we never even considered the possibility of not being able to get pregnant- which after reading many ttc blogs, was very naïve of us).

The final and most difficult step was selecting a donor. We had originally wanted to use a good friend of ours but when he and his wife had trouble conceiving, we decided it was not the best situation. Luckily, a friend of mine met a woman who owned a sperm bank and had mostly worked with same-sex couples and got some info for us. After weeks of looking at on-line profiles we narrowed it down to five potential donors and then went in to view the long profiles and baby photos. Within an hour we had our donor.

At this point we were about a month away from starting our mock cycle. We purchased two IVF vials of sperm and had it delivered to our RE for storage. During this month I spent most my time reading ttc blogs and researching what we should expect with IVF. When the time came, we did all our shots, ultrasounds, vitamins, etc. We retrieved 11 embryos of which 10 fertilized and made it to blasts. I had a good feeling we would get pregnant right away so I only wanted to transfer one embryo, but at the very last second (as I lay on the table ready for transfer) our RE convinced us to do 2 to avoid having to go through all of the shots again. We hesitantly agreed and we transferred two of my wifes embryos into my uterus.

Four days after transfer I took a home pregnancy test and it came back positive - I immediately knew it was twins. Our first beta came back at 551 and they didn't even do a second beta. Instead we did an ultrasound a week later and at 5 weeks 4 days I found out we were indeed having twins. It was surreal, although I had a good feeling we would get pregnant, after reading so many ttc blogs of women like us trying month after month, and year after year to get pregnant, with no success, I had a little doubt. I couldn't believe that after our first and only try ever, we were pregnant and expecting twins!

Almost all the blogs I follow now were ones I found before I was even pregnant. I learned so much from these women and I loved how they were able to document their experiences so I wanted to start my own blog to do the same. Unfortunately I never got around to it because I had a less than perfect pregnancy (story to follow soon) and then the boys came 2 months early and were in the NICU for one month (baby a) and two months (baby b) which is a whole other story to follow later. So needless to say, any spare time I had was rather spent sleeping, eating or showering.

So here I am 3 months after giving birth to our twins, writing my first post. I hope to write often but one thing I've learned with twins is not to plan anything!